The NBA All Star Slam Dunk Contest was tremendously gimmicky this year. Blake Griffin dunked over a car, JaVale McGee dunked two balls at once, Serge Ibaka dunked from the free throw line, and a child actor pretended to lose his toy for the good of a dunk. It was great.

Blake Griffin
Wow. So, Blake Griffin dunked over a car. Absolutely no fanfare for this one, right? Everybody gets a church choir to sing "I Believe I Can Fly" for their dunks, right? Baron Davis throws alley-oops to his teammates from a Kia Sorento sunroof parked under the hoop all of the time. That's just how dunks naturally happen for Blake Griffin. The NBA had nothing to do with amping this dunk up. None. Whatsoever. Nope.

JaVale McGee

JaVale McGee kind of owned this competition. He dunked two balls into two hoops at once! And later, he dunked three balls into one hoop at once! It took him a while to get it right, and there was no car promotion involved, but he was pretty incredible. Maybe even better-than-Blake incredible.

Serge Ibaka

Serge Ibaka dunked from behind the free-throw line. Later, TNT showed Dr. J shaking his head in a "Look-at-this-fucking-kid-right-here" kind of way. But to get it straight: Ibaka dunked from behind the free-throw line, and Dr. J dunked from around the free-throw line. Ibaka set the new standard for the free-throw dunk last night.

DeMar DeRozan

DeRozan had a solid dunk. It's one of those dunks that looks better and better the more you watch it in slow-motion — and luckily, TNT made sure we'd all have that privilege at least five times over.